Concept of Self

The Concept of Self

From early childhood, you have probably spent time thinking about who you are and what makes you different from others. By now, you already hold some ideas about yourself, even if you are not fully aware of them. A simple way to begin exploring this is to complete the sentence "I am..." ten times. You might find this harder than expected — and that is because you are being asked to describe your self.

A newborn child has no sense of self. The idea of self emerges gradually as the child grows. Parents, friends, teachers, and other significant people play a vital role in shaping a child's ideas about herself. Our interactions with others, our experiences, and the meaning we give to those experiences all serve as the foundation of our self. Importantly, the structure of self is not fixed — it is modifiable in light of new experiences and our observations of other people.

Thus, self refers to the totality of an individual's conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings with regard to herself or himself. These experiences and ideas define the existence of an individual at both the personal and the social levels.

Personal Identity and Social Identity

When you complete the "I am..." activity, the attributes you list reveal two distinct kinds of identity:

• Personal identity refers to those attributes that make a person different from others. When someone describes herself by telling her name (e.g., "I am Sanjana"), her qualities or characteristics (e.g., "I am an honest person"), her potentialities or capabilities (e.g., "I am a singer"), or her beliefs (e.g., "I am a believer in God"), she is disclosing her personal identity.

• Social identity refers to those aspects of a person that link her to a social or cultural group, or are derived from it. When someone says she is a Hindu or a Muslim, a Brahmin or an Adivasi, a North Indian or a South Indian, she is indicating her social identity.

These descriptions characterise the way people mentally represent themselves as persons.

Self as Subject and Self as Object

Look again at the descriptions from the "I am..." activity. You will notice that people describe themselves in two different ways:

• As an entity that does something — e.g., "I am a dancer" (the self as a subject, an actor)
• As an entity on which something is done — e.g., "I am one who easily gets hurt" (the self as an object, something that gets affected)

This means the self can be understood in a dual way. When you say "I know who I am," the self is being described both as a knower (subject) and as something that can be known (object). As a subject, the self actively engages in the process of knowing itself. As an object, the self gets observed and comes to be known. This dual status of self must always be kept in mind.

Kinds of Self

Several kinds of self get formed as a result of our interactions with our physical and socio-cultural environments.

Biological self. The first elements of self may be noticed when a newborn child cries for milk when hungry. Although this cry is based on reflex, it later leads to the development of awareness that "I am hungry." This biological self, however, modifies itself in the context of the socio-cultural environment. While you may feel hungry for a chocolate, an Eskimo may not. …